Continual Devotion

There was no question—and here we have what, 3,000 or more here coming in—but there was no question that they were all in.

I'm going to start out by reading Psalm 63 out of the Septuagint. You don't have to read or follow along if you don't want; just meditate on it. I'm not totally sure when David wrote this Psalm. It talks about when he was in the desert of Judea, so this may have been when he was fleeing from his son Absalom.

But anyway, it was a time when David was under extreme pressure that he wrote this. "Oh God, my God, I rise early to be with you. My soul thirsts for you. How often my flesh thirsts for you in a desolate, impassable, and waterless land. So in the holy place I appear before you to see your power and your glory.

Because your mercy is better than life, my lips shall praise you. Thus I will bless you in my life. I will lift up my hands in your name.

May my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall sing praise to you with lips filled with rejoicing. If I remembered you on my bed, I meditated on you at daybreak, for you are my helper.

And in the shelter of your wings I will greatly rejoice. My soul follows close behind you; your right hand takes hold of me. But they seek for my soul in vain. They shall go into the lowest parts of the earth. They shall be given over to the edge of the sword, and they shall be a portion for foxes.

But the king shall be glad in God. All who swear by him shall be praised, for the mouth that speaks unrighteous things is stopped." You can turn to Acts chapter 2. And so I'm going to break in right after Peter's sermon, one of the greatest sermons ever preached.

We're not going to go over that, so we're going to start at verse 37. "Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do?' Then Peter said to them, 'Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.' And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, 'Be saved from this perverse generation.'

Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need."

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

This is as encouraging of a chapter as discouraging as how we ended in Sunday school with mankind walking away from God. Here's a picture of mankind coming back to God, coming back to what God intended for them. All right.

This second chapter in the book of Acts, at least in my experience, seems to have produced two major reactions in Christianity.

In fact, as we talk about here sometimes, it seems to have resulted in a false dichotomy with two opposite sides that kind of are in conflict with one another. On one side, you have the group that wants desperately to recreate Acts chapter 2.

And the prayer that they have and that you hear is, "Let it happen again." They want to see the tongues of fire again. They want to see the Holy Spirit poured out in a fresh way. They want signs and wonders done again.

They want movements of revival that sweep across the land and convert thousands of people. And unfortunately, this group usually ends up focusing on an emotional response and experience and produces little or no fruit of repentance and very little actual obedience.

Okay, that's one side. Well, then we jump over to the other side, and we have a group that shies away from Acts chapter 2 and looks at it as nothing but historic value at best. They tend to focus on their own system of standards and traditions and actually often do well at maintaining a certain level of godliness for possibly many years.

They don't want to have emotions. They don't want to have—they might want to have revival, but revival is a little dry. And unfortunately, this group usually ends up focusing on outward conformity and again produces little or no fruit of repentance and very little life.

So that's the false dichotomy that's being created, that you're either in this group or you're in this group. You're either wanting to recreate Acts chapter 2 or you're running away from Acts chapter 2.

So as we look at these two groups—I don't know what you're all thinking.

I can't read your thoughts. But I can identify with both. I don't know about all of you here, but I can actually identify with both of these groups and say that in different times in my own life, in my own experience, I've kind of been in one side or the other. And usually, being on one side was a reaction to the other side. I didn't want to be on that side, so I went into that side. And then, "Oh, that didn't seem right," so you bounced over to the other side.

Maybe not in an extreme way, maybe not very radical in either camp, but in an effort, like I said, to stay away from one extreme, you jump to the other extreme. Can anyone else identify with that? All right, some of you are honest.

Okay. That's my experience. And now here I am, trying to figure out where I'm at.

I can also say that, thankfully, there is a middle road that cuts through both of these sides. Another way that I want to identify with that produces life, produces righteousness, produces holiness, good works, and revival. And in a nutshell, that way is a life of submission to Christ, his kingdom, and his body, the church, which in a big way involves submission to one another.

So in this context, thinking of that way in this context of the kingdom and Christ and his body, the church, if you think about Acts chapter 2 in that context, this chapter becomes hugely important to me and to us because this is where the church began. This is where we could say it kind of got started. I understand that God was working years before this, and he had people, and there was a people of God. But this is where his church began.

And while I'm not interested in trying to recreate everything that happened here, I see no reason why we in the 21st century can't continue what was started here in Acts chapter 2.

It's interesting that my Bible has a heading right before verse 42 that says, "The life of the first church." And that is the same church that we are called to be a part of today.

So what did happen right here at the beginning? Why is this so important to us? Acts chapter 2 and the rest of Acts, for that matter, is so exciting to me. I just find myself over and over just drawn to it, looking at it, trying to just put myself in that time. What all was going on here? What were the people experiencing? What was this fresh—what was that verse in the Old Testament that talks about rivers of water? It talks about something fresh. That's what was happening here.

All right, well, verse 42, I'm going to read verse 42, says that they continued steadfastly. Okay, here's what happened. Here's what happened right at the beginning of the church. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers.

So right from the start, we have four central elements of worship that the believers took very seriously and that have continued through the centuries and on into the present.

The question is, how seriously do we take these four elements today? Or have we somehow replaced them with our own system of worship, our own way of doing things?

So what I'm hoping to do in my next couple sermons, probably three or four sermons, is to look at each of these key elements and their importance in the life of the church today, or we could say in the life of the early church and then in the life of the church today, and hopefully look at practical ways to keep them central in our worship.

But this morning, before we get to that, I want to look at what came first. Something else came first. And it's more of a character trait, a characteristic that each of us needs to have first if we want to experience the full benefit of these key elements of worship. Now, we could easily say that the Holy Spirit came first. This is what happened when the Holy Spirit came in. And there's truth in that. The Holy Spirit definitely enabled a lot of what was going on here. But there's something else I want to look at that's extremely important that I'm going to say most, if not all, these people already had integrated into their lives, definitely continued in this.

So we have this word steadfastly, which, while it may be the correct usage here, I don't think it gives us the full impact of what the meaning is. And I don't mind the word steadfast. It gives the idea of something that's not moving. It's solid.

It's constant.

You could think of the word faithful. So I like the word steadfast, but there's another word that I want to look at more. And most of the other translations, including the ESV, use another word. So they would say that here, just reading this again, that they devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.

Use the word devoted, devotion.

Some other words or phrases that could be used are to be earnest toward, to persevere, be constantly diligent, to adhere closely to, attend continually. I really like that. I'm going to be using the word continue a lot.

I like all those words. But clearly, these first believers prioritized their lives in such a way that the kingdom or the church and the worship of God received their first and foremost allegiance or loyalty or whatever you want to call it.

There was no question. And here we have what, 3,000 or more here coming in? But there was no question that they were all in with continual devotion.

And I like that phrase. And I've had that hammered in my mind the last day or so. Continual devotion.

Have I devoted myself to the worship of Christ and to his body? Have you devoted yourself to the worship of Christ and to his body? Is there anything else that should or could take higher priority in our lives?

I don't know if you were listening when I read this psalm, but look at what David said in that psalm. He talked about, "You're my God, and I'm going to seek you early, early in the morning. At night on my bed, I'm going to meditate on you.

My soul's thirsty for you." And he just uses all these words of extreme longing and desire for God, loyalty, devotion. You just see that coming out in David, and you see that coming out in David's life.

Devotion, by definition, is love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause. And actually, I jumped a little bit ahead of myself here. But in thinking of Psalm 63, supposedly John Chrysostom wrote that it was decreed and ordained by the early church fathers that no day should pass without the public singing of this psalm, Psalm 63.

I also read that the early church had the practice of beginning the singing of the psalms at each Sunday service with this psalm. If that's true, it definitely fits with what we read in Acts, this total devotion.

Just imagine setting the tone of our worship service by singing those songs out of that Psalm 63. Just read that again. Devotion, by definition, is love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause. So in the context, we're thinking about Acts chapter 2 and what's happening here.

In this context, that means we are to be devoted.

And by that, it means that we love or loyal to and enthusiastic about the person of Christ, the activity of worship, which includes teaching, fellowship, communion, and prayers, and the cause of the kingdom. So we have a person, activity, and a cause: the person of Christ, the activity of worship, and the cause of the kingdom.

That is what devotion calls us in love and loyalty to those three things. We talk about devoted husbands and devoted wives and devoted parents. I see a lot of devoted parents here, devoted employees.

And none of these are wrong causes at all. We should be devoted to those causes. But hopefully, in our lives as believers, they are all means to aid us in our highest devotion to Christ instead of distracting us from that devotion.

And I trust that's our experience here.

In Acts chapter 10, we read about Cornelius.

And he was called a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. Here's this word continually, this continual devotion to God.

But Cornelius was also a centurion in the Roman army. And I can only imagine that he was a very devoted centurion, that he took his job seriously.

He would have had to have made an oath to the Roman army. He took that very seriously.

He was devoted to that responsibility. But it's obvious. You read that he was a centurion, but then you read what his life actually was about. And it's obvious that his devotion to God overshadowed his other duties. And of all people, God chose him to be among the first Gentiles to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I'm not sure what all happened to Cornelius after that. There may be history that I'm not aware of. But I'm sure that he took that, and his devotion to God never changed. And whatever had to happen in the rest of his world, I'm sure we're all loyal to what God expected of him.

Another person in the Bible that I thought of who is a good example of devotion is Daniel. Now, Daniel lived long before Pentecost. He lived long before the book of Acts. But if he had lived in the time of Acts, he would definitely have been among the first believers here in Acts chapter 2.

In fact, there are hundreds, if not thousands of men and women in the Old Testament whose lives of devotion to God would put us to shame.

Daniel is no exception. Just you got to read his story in the Septuagint because it just really brings out a lot of things about Daniel that aren't in the other translations. As a young man living as a captive in a foreign nation, Daniel purposed in his heart that nothing would come between him and his worship of the true God. And when his loyalty to God was put to the test, you see Daniel not even flinching in his resolve to worship, although it meant certain death. And I love verse 11 and 12 here of chapter 6 of Daniel. In chapter 6, verse 11, okay, so these guys are out to get Daniel. They plot against him.

They said they couldn't find any fault in him. There was nothing in this guy that they could find that would disqualify him from his position. The only thing they could find was they knew that Daniel was devoted to his God and to the law of his God. And so that's how they went about it. We all know what happened. But verse 11 says, "Now when Daniel learned that the decree was posted, he entered his house where the windows facing Jerusalem were open to him in the upper rooms, and he knelt down on his knees three times that day and prayed and gave thanks to his God as he was doing before." And of course, these guys were watching.

There's just something about that. You see this again, this continual devotion. Daniel never stopped.

So he was faced with the threat of death. He was going to worship his God. There was nothing. It doesn't seem like he even questioned whether or not he should maybe hide in his closet or go down in the basement so no one saw him. He goes to the same spot three times a day. He prays and gives thanks to God. That's just very powerful. Devotion, ultimate devotion.

The lives we see of both Cornelius and Daniel and so many others were marked by this continual devotion to God. It don't matter what kind of circumstances came into their experience. The devotion was the highest priority, and that was what they were going to stick with. What about our lives as 21st-century believers? We have a lot going on. We have pressures. We have stress. We're busy.

Is my life marked with continual daily devotion to God?

The kind of devotion that isn't distracted by circumstances or pressures of life. The kind of devotion that motivates me to get up early in the morning so that I have time to still my heart before God and spend meaningful time in prayer in the Word. A quote that you've probably heard goes like this: "Discipline says, 'I need to.' Duty says, 'I ought to.' Devotion says, 'I want to.'" And I like that progression. We got to have discipline.

I mean, without discipline, we're probably not going to get to the place of devotion. And we need duty. We need that sense of duty that tells us, "I got to do this. I have to do this." But we all want to be in the place of devotion that says, "I want this." And that's the cry of David that we hear in the Psalms, that, "I want this."

David wasn't crying out to God because of some need that—or I shouldn't say it that way—but because he had to or he was being forced to. It was a voluntary cry out to God because he had a relationship with Him.

Billy Graham said, "Nothing can take the place of a daily devotional life with Christ. Your quiet time, your prayer time, the time you spend in the Word is absolutely essential for a happy Christian life. You cannot possibly be a happy, dynamic, and powerful Christian apart from a daily walk with God."

Now, I like that. That's convicting.

So is our life marked by a continual devotion to Christ, a daily devotion, something that's ongoing? There's never a quitting time. There's never a time to hit pause. There's never a time to say, "You know what? There's just too much pressure going on in my life. I got to take a break from this." It's got to be continual if it's going to be devotion. And that's what I see in Acts chapter 2 with the people here where it says they were steadfast in this. They continued.

They were devoted to what was going on here in the church and what was going on in God's kingdom coming to earth. They were all in. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Psalm 1:1, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the troublesome. But his will," we're all used to saying, "his delight, is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night continually." Romans 15:4, "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope." Jesus talking in Matthew 6:33, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

Psalm 119:48, "And I raise my hands to your commandments, which I love, and I meditate on your ordinances." Hopefully, we love God's commandments.

And it's not just a duty. Mark 1:35, "Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, he, Jesus, went out and departed to a solitary place, and there he prayed." Psalm 37:4, "Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the request of your heart." Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth." Joshua 1:8, "The book of this law shall not depart from your mouth, and you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may have the understanding to do all the things written therein.

Then you will both prosper, make your ways prosperous, and have understanding." And Romans 12:11, "Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord." That's a very good definition of devotion. That verse fits right in. Fervent in spirit.

I'm going to close with the words of Jesus to the church of the Laodiceans found in Revelation 3. This was the last of the seven churches that Jesus, or at least that we have recorded in that order, this was the last one that he wrote to. And I'm not at all insinuating that we are at the place of this church here in Laodicea. I pray that we're not or that we need this warning.

But I want you to take it as an encouragement to make sure that our devotion to Christ as individuals in our own devotional life and corporately as a body, that our devotion never grows cold, never even grows lukewarm. The warning here is you can't even be lukewarm.

Take it as an encouragement and as a warning that if it does, this is what Jesus will say to us. Verse 14, "And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, 'These things says thee, O man, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy and have need of nothing,' and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eye salve, and you may see, that you may see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

So we're closing with another door, a picture of a door. We never want Jesus to be outside that door knocking to come in. Let's keep Christ inside. Let's keep him inside where it's hot. Let's keep our devotion, our loyalty, our love hot so that Christ is with us.